


Stranger than Fiction

by NebulousMistress



Series: The Shadow Over Atlantis [7]
Category: Cthulhu Mythos - Fandom, Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M, Miskatonic University, Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 10:26:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7044634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulousMistress/pseuds/NebulousMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She couldn't tell him. She could barely even show him. Maybe Meredith's idea would work?</p>
<p>Follows chapter 5 of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6801316">Open Secrets</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Stranger than Fiction

The rental car sped along the highway outside of Boston, Massachusetts. The woman driving threw her mind into controlling the machine beneath her so she wouldn't have to feel the waves of doubt coming from the man beside her. The man in the passenger seat debated asking for the umpteenth time why they were going to her brother's undergrad alma mater, decided not to. The little girl in the back seat kicked her legs and made swimming motions with the plush fishy in her hands.

“Are we there yet?” asked the little girl

Jeannie Miller pulled her concentration back to her husband and daughter. “It won't be long now,” she promised. The forest of bright green elms, maple, oaks lent an idyllic quality to the trip, a sense of fantasy that Jeannie felt was warranted. A sign flew past.

_Arkham...20 miles_

“How about now?” Madison asked. “I'm thirsty. Can we get a hotel with a swimming pool? I wanna go swimming.”

*****

“I can take a bath all by myself,” Madison stated, hands on her hips. She still wore her wet bathing suit, towel in hand.

“Okay, honey,” Jeannie said. “Daddy and I will be just out here if you need us, okay?”

Madison nodded and closed the bathroom door.

Kaleb Miller waited until the water was running before turning to his wife with confused, almost accusing eyes. “Jeannie, you still haven't explained all this,” he said. “What's going on? Why are we in a hotel in the middle of Arkham, Massachusetts?”

Jeannie sighed and sat down, gesturing for her husband to do the same. She hadn't told him. In the month since her return from Atlantis she hadn't told him. How could she have when she'd learned about it herself less than two months ago? This idea of her brother being a Deep One was downright insane, it broke several rules of biology, it went against everything she trusted about the world, and yet...

“There's something you need to know,” she said. “About me. Maybe about Madison, I don't know. Something I didn't even know until recently.”

“What is it, are you ill?” Kaleb whispered. “It's worse, isn't it?”

“It's... complicated. I don't even know how to say this.”

“Whatever it is we'll work through this together.”

“It's genetic,” she blurted. “Dad had it before he died. Meredith has it. I'm a carrier. And Madison... she might have it. I don't know.”

Kaleb went pale. “Oh God,” he murmured. “Is she okay? Are you okay?”

Jeannie could **feel** his panic. “I'm fine, Kaleb. I swear to you, I'm fine. Our baby is just fine. We're fine.”

“Why wait until now to say anything?” he asked. “Why drag us out to the middle of Lovecraft country to say this? Here doesn't have anything to do with what you're trying to tell me, does it? What is this genetic 'thing' you both have?”

“I... I shouldn't have said anything,” Jeannie blurted. She laid on the bed and curled in on herself, miserable. She couldn't tell him, not without knowing first that he would believe her. And that was something she could never be sure of.

“Shhhh...” Kaleb laid down next to his wife, wrapped his arms around her. “Whatever this is we'll get through it. I promise.”

Jeannie burrowed into her husband's embrace. She truly hoped he meant it.

*****

The next day found Kaleb following in mild confusion as Jeannie and Madison cavorted all around the Miskatonic University campus. It wasn't the quiet stroll of the native, the wide-eyed staring of the tourist, the eager nervousness of the incoming freshman. It was something... weird. There was something decidedly weird and something very ulterior going on here.

“So Uncle Meredith really almost became a doctor here?” Madison asked.

“Yep,” Jeannie said. “But he didn't like it as much as physics so he had to go somewhere else.”

Kaleb tuned out their conversation to observe their surroundings. It really was a beautiful campus, though handicapped by the notoriety of being **The** Miskatonic University. They'd tried to capitalize on that notoriety with one of the last operating parascience departments in the country. Their rare books collection was rumored to be envied, something he was itching to look at, but those rumors couldn't possibly be true. After all, the _Necronomicon_ didn't really exist, did it? No, it couldn't. None of the local rumors could be trusted. After all, if even half of the rumors about Lovecraft country were correct then...

Then maybe it wasn't fiction after all. And that would be insane. Also bad. Very, very bad.

Speaking of bad, they were being followed. Kaleb poked Jeannie out of her dialogue. “That man has been following us all day,” he murmured.

Madison pointed to the old man. “That man?” she asked.

“Madison, don't point,” Kaleb snapped but it was too late.

Jeannie picked up Madison. “Let's go meet him,” she said, already on the move.

“Jeannie...” Kaleb swore under his breath before following,

To his credit the old man looked sheepish enough at having been caught. “I see I'm a bit rusty,” he admitted, extending his hand. “I haven't conducted field research in over 20 years. Dr. James Randall, anthropology.”

“Jeannie Miller,” Jeannie said, shaking his hand. “This is my daughter Madison and my husband Kaleb.”

Old Professor Randall looked intently at Madison, scanning every feature of her face. She got shy and hid in her mother's neck. “Forgive the question as I may have forgotten my sense of tact in my old age, but is she yours? Or have you adopted?”

“No, she's definitely ours,” Jeannie said, cutting off Kaleb's indignant retort. “She gets it from my side of the family.”

“And yet you're so beautiful, my dear,” Randall said. “A little suggestion around the eyes, perhaps...”

“Suggestion of what?” Kaleb demanded.

“Why, the Innsmouth Look, of course,” Randal said matter-of-factly. He looked between the two of them and realized. “You never told him? Whyever not?”

Kaleb stood shocked, mouth open. This was all some elaborate prank, it had to be. He grabbed his wife's wrist and started trying to drag her away. “Jeannie, we're leaving,” he snapped.

“Oh dear,” Randall said.

“Kaleb!” Jeannie shouted, wrenching her wrist from his grasp. “Stop it!”

Kaleb turned, eyes flashing as he looked from his wife to his daughter to this obviously insane old man with varying degrees of incredulity. “You can't honestly believe this--this utter nonsense, can you?”

“It's not nonsense,” Jeannie pleaded. “I thought it was too but then I saw Meredith. He's Changed, Kaleb. He's almost taken to the water. He's barely human anymore, he's **hideous**. And it could easily have happened to me too but it hasn't and now Madison...”

“What about Madison?” Kaleb demanded.

“Deep One blood sometimes skips generations,” Jeannie said. “There's no way to know if she has it or not.”

“You don't believe this,” Kaleb pleaded. “It's insane!”

“Do you honestly think I want this?” Jeannie demanded. “Do you think I **like** the idea of being some sort of secret monster?”

Randall watched the pair, realized they were getting ready for a pretty big row. “We should continue this somewhere private,” Randall suggested. The Millers were gathering onlookers. “Would you care to come to my office?”

Jeannie took a deep breath, nodded, and turned on her heel to storm off toward the building, Madison still in her arms. Kaleb threw his hands up and followed.

*****

Professor Randall's office looked like it came direct from a Lovecraft story. The antique wood furniture, the bookshelves stacked full of musty tomes and strange artifacts, even the two old comfy chairs with a tiny low table stacked high with essays between them. The addition of a computer to the desk looked more strange than the shriveled hand or the clay bas-relief of some monstrosity.

“Coffee?” Randall asked, pouring himself a mug. “It's a habit I picked up from Meredith when he was my student.”

Jeannie sat in a chair but declined coffee. Kaleb stood, looking uncomfortable.

Randall swung his desk chair around and settled in. “First and foremost, Mr. Miller, there are some things you have to accept,” he said. “That Lovecraft was right about a few things is one. That Deep Ones are real is another. There really was a town of Innsmouth. The ruins are about ten miles outside of town, the state calls it a 'wildlife refuge' now and bans all boat traffic to the area.”

“And the raids?” Jeannie asked.

“The raids happened too,” Randall continued. “Local rumor is that the small children rounded up in those raids were lost in orphanages, kept protected by the chaos of the system. Your grandmother, Mrs. Miller, was born Rosalyn Marsh of Innsmouth. Her mother, Esther Marsh, died in those raids.”

“This is insane,” Kaleb muttered.

“It does indeed sound insane,” Randall admitted. “But I assure you, truth and insanity are by no means mutually exclusive.”

“How do you know this?” Jeannie asked. “Forgive me from saying so but anthropology and Meredith... You said he was your student?”

“I have followed his education and career with great interest,” Randall said while searching through his desk. “It was my letter of recommendation that got him into Area 51. Oh, I know, it's all very classified and I'm not supposed to know about it. But he did brag, at least at first. He still does to a lesser extent. A-hah, here it is.” He pulled out an envelope, hand-addressed with Rodney's handwriting, no return address. “I received this letter from him about a year or so ago. He doesn't detail much, only that he's working on something... special.”

He reached into the envelope and pulled out a handwritten letter. Something slipped out of the letter, clapped softly to the floor. Randall muttered and picked it up to show them. It was a greenish-silver scale about an inch and a half long. “Doubtless you recognize this?”

Jeannie nodded. Kaleb stared.

“I've never seen anything like that,” Kaleb stated.

“I have,” Madison piped in.

“You have?” Jeannie asked. “Where?”

“In my... dreams...” Madison looked around, suddenly less sure.

“What kind of dreams, my dear?” Randall asked.

“It's okay, you can tell us,” Jeannie urged.

“In my dreams I'm swimming,” Madison began. “It's dark and wet and deep but I know where I am. I keep swimming and I find a city with lights and stuff but it's all underwater and there's plants and crabs and fishies and other things... and, and people! Swimming people and I'm one of the swimming people and one of them always finds me and tells me she's my great gramma. She's all sad that my granpa didn't come down to live with all the swimming people and she misses Uncle Meredith and she doesn't know where he is and she's sad that you're not there, Mommy. But I'm there and she's happy and I'm happy and then...”

Randall knelt down next to the small child and began a cursory examination, pulling on the loose skin between her fingers and looking at the shape of her eyes.

“And then I wake up.”

Kaleb couldn't believe what he was hearing. This crazy old man was not only feeding his wife's twisted fantasies but now he was encouraging Madison to play along. Everything he'd tried to teach Madison about living in reality was falling away. Alien cities, giant spaceships, ascended Ancients, life-sucking monsters, he'd heard his wife's stories. Hell, he'd been the one to encourage her to go. But that was in a whole different galaxy! This...

This was too close to home. Things were entirely different when it was in his family instead of safely in deep space. He hadn't bargained for this when he convinced his wife to work with the Stargate program. He left the office without a word.

“Kaleb!” Jeannie called as he left.

“Daddy?” Madison asked.

“Let him go,” Randall said. “He needs time to think. Tell me, Mrs. Miller, how far has Meredith's Change progressed? What does he look like?”

*****

Kaleb Miller wandered the campus in an angry haze. His feet carried him from the Science Annex, through green lawns and past manicured trees, past the bell tower and the historical dormitories, finding himself on the steps of the Orne Library. He gazed at the bronze statue of Henry Armitage in front of the library. The statue clutched a book with one arm, a curious symbol like a five pointed star with an eye in the middle carved on its cover. The statue's other hand was upraised in a three-fingered gesture.

Kaleb stared unseeingly at the twin Elder Signs displayed openly on the statue. He couldn't believe, he wouldn't. There were so many things wrong with what was going on here. But what exactly made it wrong? Was it that when Jeannie had come to him with tales of Atlantis it all seemed so fantastical? Was it that when it was only Jeannie and her weird brother it wasn't close enough to seem real? He hadn't even met the McKay brother until two years ago, until right before the whole Atlantis thing started.

He blamed Meredith for the Atlantis thing. He still blamed the man for the whole kidnapping and nanites. How could he not? If they'd just been left alone, if Jeannie hadn't sent in that proof, if she hadn't been in math...

Then she wouldn't be his Jeannie.

Kaleb sighed. Could he believe this whole Deep One thing? It was much closer now than something a galaxy away for his wife to deal with. Now it was within his own family. His daughter was affected. **Their** daughter was affected. How would Madison grow up with this? How long would she look human before...

They were discussing having another child. What would happen then? Would their second-born face this same fate?

He needed to think. The library might help. Libraries always helped him think.

The Orne Library was open and inviting. The computer room to the left, check-out and information to the right. Reference straight ahead, periodicals just past that. The Armitage Reading Room looked promising.

Comfy chairs and square tables dominated the room. A few students lounged about, some taking advantage of the library's wifi, some sleeping. A trio of people, they didn't look like students, were huddled around a table whispering about a book and a plot. Or something. Kaleb didn't want to know.

He wandered the room, noting titles that had been left by previous people: _Psychic Self Defense, Advanced Theories in Quantum Gravity, The Aquatic Ape, Culte des Ghoules_...

Wait, _Culte des Ghoules_? Kaleb picked it up in curiosity. He'd heard of this one before. Wasn't it a Mythos book? He turned to the title page.

“Volume 2 of 4...” he mused aloud.

A librarian quickly snatched the book from his hands before he could read any further. “How did this one get out,” the librarian muttered. “It's not supposed to leave the Vault. You found this, I see, good good, but you have to come with me, Sir. There are procedures when a book leaves the Vault.” The librarian dragged a confused Kaleb down a hallway, down some stairs, another hallway, past a guard, past a wrought iron gate...

A door opened in front of them, a door labeled 'Special Collections'. An artful mosaic over the doorway held the pattern of an Elder Sign.

“What's going on?” Kaleb asked.

“ _Cultes des Ghoules_ got out again, Diana,” said his escort. “Volume 2. Want me to check to make sure the other volumes are accounted for?”

“He didn't read it, did he?” Diana asked. She waved him off to check. Only then did Kaleb notice the necklaces they wore, tiny Elder Signs. It appeared to be a popular decoration here.

“I only saw him read a little bit, you should check anyway.” Henry jogged down into the Vault, _Cultes des Ghoules_ in hand.

“I found it in the Armitage Reading Room,” Kaleb said. “I only read the title page before what's-his-name took the book from me.”

“Do you have any overwhelming urge to eat the flesh of your fellow man?” Diana asked. She sounded almost bored.

“Wait, what?”

“Has your speech been replaced by a series of gibbers and meeps?”

Kaleb leveled her with a glare. This had to be a joke.

Diana thrust her Elder Sign in Kaleb's face. “Does this hurt?”

“You don't actually believe all that nonsense, do you?” Kaleb asked.

“Reality is that which doesn't go away when you stop believing in it,” Diana said. “You're human, or close enough.”

Kaleb's escort came back from the Vault. “Well, the third volume's missing,” he lamented. “He safe?”

“He's safe,” Diana said.

“Why are you taking this seriously?” Kaleb wondered.

“My name is Henry Armitage the third. You think my parents gave me this name to be funny?”

A pounding sounded from the door behind them. “That's probably Owen again,” Diana said. “I'll let him in.”

Both librarians stuffed their Elder Sign necklaces into their shirts even as Diana opened the main door to find a nervous looking student with big blue eyes and a look of pained terror. Without a word Diana got out a footstool, climbed up, and covered the mosaic over the door with a sheet of cardboard. The young student's fear immediately faded and he sighed with relief as he stepped inside.

Once he was inside Kaleb got a good look at this newcomer, this Owen. He wore a dark blue duster over his clothes, carried a backpack covered in white-out scribbles of octupi, was prematurely balding, and wore a strange gold necklace featuring a leering sea monster that disturbed Kaleb on some instinctual level.

“Rumor says the Marsh family's back in town,” Owen said.

“Really?” Diana wondered. “I figured Meredith would have taken to the water by now. Such a smart boy. Egotistical though.”

Wait, Meredith? Not McKay...

“And rightly so,” Owen said, puffing up in a strange pride. “Sadly, not him. Didja know he has a sister? Her Change stunted but she brought her husband and they spawned, just the cutest little hybrid you ever did see. Professor Randall's got them in his office.”

Something in Kaleb's mind fell into place, or out of. “You're all insane,” he accused. “My daughter's normal, just like everyone else. There are no Deep Ones and my wife and daughter are certainly not hybrids!”

“Failed his sanity check,” Diana whispered to Henry. Henry tried not to laugh.

“And you're all encouraging this!” Kaleb continued, his voice rising to a scream. “This town would be completely normal if it weren't for your living up to some madman's bedtime stories! Lovecraft wrote fiction! It's not true! It can't be true!” He fell to his knees. “It can't be...”

Owen knelt down next to Kaleb and stared him unsettlingly in the eye. “You're the husband?” he asked. “And you never knew? Sad, really. She either shoulda told you before you went and spawned or she never shoulda said a thing.”

Kaleb shrank away from this incredibly creepy man with his incredibly creepy eyes that seemed to glow with a faint eyeshine even in this light. He had all the same physical oddness that Meredith had last time he was here. At that moment he suddenly realized...

“It's all true...”

He fainted.

*****

When he came to he heard a familiar voice calling to him. “Kaleb, honey are you okay?”

His view of the ceiling changed, a face blocking the light. Kaleb blinked to clear his vision. “Jeannie?”

Jeannie looked worried. Another face joined hers and Kaleb couldn't shake the feeling that she and Owen had the same eyes. “You fainted,” Owen said.

“Right here in front of the librarians,” Jeannie said. “What happened?”

“It's true, isn't it...” Kaleb whispered.

“It's all true,” Diana said from the desk.

“Where's Madison?” Kaleb asked.

“Professor Randall is taking her for ice cream. She couldn't come in the library,” Jeannie said. “She started crying at the statue out front. I don't blame her, all these Elder Signs give me the creeps.”

“Word,” Owen agreed.

“'The Elder Sign repels all those ancient enemies of the Old Ones, of which Cthulhu and his Deep Ones are most notorious',” Henry said, quoting the _Necronomicon_ from memory.

Kaleb sat up before leaning into his wife. She wrapped her arms around him, her breath changing as she instinctually tried to purr.

Kaleb held his wife close. This... this was insanity. And Lovecraft was only one of many thousands of writers over the centuries who claimed to find inspiration in dreams. How many of them were right? What kind of world did they live in? Stargates, aliens, star-spawn, monsters, and now this...

“I love you, Kaleb,” Jeannie said.

He didn't answer.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Wraithbait under a different name and a different title.


End file.
